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@unaspenser bullying is a tricky topic and merely moving from a monolithic and hierarchical system to a federated one does not make the problems of social relations go away. There is still squabbling and differences of all kinds.
One thing a federated system does do however is shift the power balance. In the silo model a small number of people get to control the majority and there is typically no recognizable governance. Mr Zuckerberg simply decides that he does not like a certain group, and then they are erased from his system. One man's morality imposed upon the world.
The federation allows for groups to exist independently. To form their own policies and governance. If you're ejected from one server you can probably join another, or start your own. When that happens it means that you don't necessarily lose contact with friends, because of the common protocol.
- juan repeated this.
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@unaspenser there have been a few major exoduses so far and whether people return to the silos will typically depend upon how large their affinity group is here and how much they care about having freedom and independence. If there is a shortage of server capacity then people who are sufficiently motivated will usually find a way to get one running. One or my projects is related to that.
Tech barriers are always an issue, but are getting easier. Every year things improve a little. The software improves and the cheapest single board computers get more powerful.
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@unaspenser if you mean bullying, then that's a problem which technology alone doesn't resolve. People have to work out their differences, and that's not always easy. At the mundane level, bullying is the tip of the spear which is the dialectical forces of society.
Freedom is always constant struggle.
I know that in siloland there is sometimes the belief that Facebook or Twitter - the archetypal benevolent leadership - will defend you from the bad people of the internets, but seeing the various exoduses over the years I'm pretty sure that's not true. The leadership can also be bad. At least in the fediverse there is no single leader.
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@unaspenser The containment and ejection of disruptive elements certainly does happen. In one memorable case from a few years ago a terror group showed up on one server and once the admin became aware of it their accounts were shut down. Different admins can have different policies though and so there isn't any universal standard for outgroup identification.
The extent to which there is mutual aid depends upon what instance you're on and how much affinity there is between users. In a small group with strong bonds deflecting troublemakers is easier than on an instance with a large user to admin ratio.
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@unaspenser yes I agree. It is always possible to run a private instance, like a closed club, but isolating yourself entirely is usually no fun and its at the intersections between narratives where new things usually happen and new ideas come into being. At the level of server admins you might federate with some other servers and not with others, depending on user feedback. Over time the network structure and the social structure align.
Bob Mottram
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